Perhaps understandably, the only thing that seems to be wrong with Johnson today is an advanced case of bemusement. ‘When I was making the album with Roger, I really thought I was at the end’ … Wilko Johnson and Roger Daltrey live in London in February 2014. After nine hours in theatre, the removal of a tumour “the size of a baby”, as well as of his pancreas, spleen, part of his stomach and intenstines, a succession of “very painful” secondary infections and a period of convalescence, Johnson was told he was cancer-free last October, just over a year and half after he’d been told he was going to die imminently. Huguet announced that Johnson’s cancer was operable, albeit with only a 15% chance of his surviving the operation. Then a fan, who happened to be a doctor, saw Johnson playing the Cornbury festival: wondering why he wasn’t “either dead or very, very ill”, he referred him to Emmanuel Huguet, an oncologist at Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge. Apparently living on borrowed time, he recorded a new album, with the Who’s Roger Daltrey, convinced he wouldn’t live to see it released: Going Back Home went gold, Johnson’s biggest success since 1976, when Dr Feelgood’s live album Stupidity topped an album chart otherwise dominated by Demis Roussos. “I was thinking, ‘This is great showbusiness.’ I mean, the emotion was so powerful, and I thought: ‘What a great show.’”Īnd then the strangest thing happened: Wilko Johnson didn’t die. The farewell tour passed off in a blur of emotionally charged gigs, tearful fans literally waving goodbye as he played Chuck Berry’s Bye Bye Johnny. I dunno, if that communicated something positive for people, that’s marvellous, but I didn’t intend to.” Sometimes the insights and ecstasies and whatever were so intense, I’d think, ‘Man, this is almost worth it!’ One of the ways I dealt with it was to absolutely accept it, and think: ‘Right, they’ve told me this thing is inoperable – if I’ve got 10 months to live, I just want to do it, I don’t want to spend 10 months running around after second opinions or false hopes.’ In a way, it was a kind of comfort zone, accepting that I was going to die and all the questions of mortality had been sorted out for me. “I didn’t plan to feel that way about death,” he says. Promoting a farewell tour, he gave a series of interviews that provoked not an outpouring of public sympathy, but something approaching a weird envy: we should all be so lucky to face imminent death with the kind of calm, philosophical acceptance that Johnson displayed. Then, in early 2013, he announced that he had terminal pancreatic cancer. He was already a cult figure in the rock world: a founder member of Canvey Island’s celebrated punk precursors Dr Feelgood, whose unwavering devotion to old-fashioned rhythm and blues and taut, explosive guitar playing had inspired everyone from Paul Weller to Joe Strummer of the Clash. But that’s precisely what Johnson seems to have become, thanks to what he calls “the twists and turns of the last two or three years”. Still, good company or not, he doesn’t look much like a candidate for national treasurehood, or “a 100-1 shot for the title of Greatest Living Englishman”, the latter bestowed on him by a Guardian critic a few years ago.
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